Hurricane Michael in Panama City, Panama City Beach, and damage in Mexico Beach, Florida: Storm Chaser Aaron Jayjack

aaronjayjack (54)in #hurricane • 6 years ago (edited)

I chased Hurricane Michael this past week. It was by far the worst damage I have seen in my storm chasing career. As if an EF3 tornado ripped through a 40 mile wide area.

My intercept of the hurricane occurred on the causeway between Panama City Beach and Panama City, Florida. I knew Michael was a fast moving storm, and tried to keep that in mind when making critical chasing decisions in the hour and minutes up to landfall. And even though I expected conditions to deteriorate fast, I was still caught off guard with Michael’s speed and how quickly the whole thing unfolded.

My last minute plan when it was evident the eye was going to miss Panama City Beach was to try to make a run into the eye from the lower left quadrant of the eye wall, as Michael started to pull away from my location and the winds would subside some. However, the winds were too fierce to safely cross the causeway into Panama City through the entire eyewall intercept, and had I crossed, my vehicle likely would’ve been shredded. So I was forced to ride the storm out on the lower half of the Panama City Beach side of the causeway. After assessing the damage the following day, I 100% made the correct call, as I would not have been able to keep up with Michael’s speed through the Panama City war zone maze to get into the eye. Michael struck the gulf coast like a hammer; hard and concise.

Here is a video of some clips of the wind and damage in the minutes following eyewall passage through the area:

The day following the storm, we would maneuver ourselves through both the inner western eyewall in Callaway and inner eastern eyewall near Mexico Beach, where the worst surge devastated the coastline. The following video gives an aerial view of the damage around Callaway including a flyover of a large pine forest that was completely decimated.

Large swaths of houses were wiped clean from their foundations along Mexico Beach in Florida. Many homes had never been tested by such a strong hurricane and were built well before building codes were changed following Hurricane Andrew.